.Net Foundation On .NET, 2 Apr 2020

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From YouTube: Tips on public speaking from Andres, Phil, Scott, and Cecil

Description

It’s common for attendees at conferences to ask the speakers about what it’s like to give a talk on stage. How do they prepare? How do they create the story? How do they handle equipment failures?

While we were at the Caribbean developers conference, we put together a panel of speakers to share some of their thoughts and experiences with you on public speaking

[00:57] - How do you design a story arc?
[04:10] - The importance of empathy
[06:48] - Staying calm under pressure and being prepared
[12:20] - Finding your personality on stage

Public speaking with Scott Hanselman, Kendra Havens, Maria Naggaga Nakanwagi, Kasey Uhlenhuth, and Donovan Brown
https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/On-NET/Public-speaking-with-Scott-Hanselman-Kendra-Havens-Maria-Naggaga-Nakanwagi-Kasey-Uhlenhuth-and-Donov?WT.mc_id=ondotnet-c9-cephilli

Speaking Hacks: http://www.speakinghacks.com
Get involved in tech: http://www.getinvolvedintech.com/

Build your .NET apps with Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/dotnet/?WT.mc_id=ondotnet-c9-cephilli

A

Hey friends,, I'm scott hanselman., we're here at the carribean developers conference in the dominican republic. we're here with cecil, myself, phil, andres..

A

We are here blessed to be speaking with this illustrious group of speakers from all over the world.

A

Lots of cool people talking about lots of cool technology.

A

So we thought it would be a good idea to do a little mini-session on how to be an effective speaker.

A

So I thought I would bring three of the most effective speakers that I know together,.

A

We can have this conversation. sure., so I want to ask a couple of questions. Here., I think about the story. Arc first.

A

No matter what you're doing, you've got to figure out. What story are you trying to sell.

A

sure., not to sell, but to say.? What do you want the audience to come away? With? sure.? How do you design a story? Arc? sure. for me,, there's, usually points.

B

So when I give a presentation,, what is the thing? I want you to learn. About?.

B

What's the thing, I want you to get excited about?. What's the thing I want you to know, about? the takeaway., the takeaway., I'm not going to teach you a tutorial or one- by-one..

B

I just want you to know about it.. I want you to get really excited about it, so that when you do leave the talk, you're excited enough to want to go home and try it out, to google it, to bing it, or to install it and just play around it. A little bit.

A

I think of myself as an edutainer..

A

I want someone to have fun, to stay awake and then go back with,, "oh wow,, that seems cool.".

A

Maybe I can apply that to my life., so I may not have necessarily taught them something,, but I've got them excited like a documentary. sure., a documentary makes you go, "wow,. That's an interesting topic.. I will read a book on that.".

A

How do you build your stories?.

C

Same way as cecil was saying,, I don't necessarily start with a story..

C

I start with the takeaways.. What is it that I want you to walk away, knowing that you didn't know before, and that's going to be applicable to what you're doing?.

C

Then I look at, okay, now that I have an idea of what I want you to takeaway,.

C

How do I want to get you there?, so you work backwards from the finish line?.

A

Yeah. then, I start to think about,.

C

What's going to keep you in the chair listening to me?, what is the story arc about? That?

C

there's,, I don't know, seven different stories in the world, different structures.

C

So sometimes I will actually, literally, look up those different story. Arcs. you mean like the hero's journey, somewhere to get skywalker?.

C

Or a tragedy, like I was trying to build this app and everything went to heck.

C

Then I use containers, and now it all works,, like that sort of thing.

A

That's a great tragedy and the docker at the end.

D

How do you build your stories,, andres? well,, in a way that I try to.

D

Do my presentation is that I go with what I want to learn.

D

What you want to learn? what I want to learn if I were sitting in the other side.

D

It's like sometimes we want to [inaudible] something,, but probably that's not what people want to listen.

D

It's just also looking for what they want to see.

D

Especially,, it happens to me a lot.

D

for me,. It's important that when you leave the room,, you learn something that you want.

D

as you just mentioned,. It's not just giving a talk, because that's another gig that I like.

B

It's another gig that I like, and I propose.

D

You to see it, and probably you find it entertaining too,.

D

So I will try to go with those. for me, something I do, that if I go late,, I'm usually changing my presentation based on what people for example,. If I were speaking today,, I will see what people were looking,.

D

What were commenting for yesterday's conferences, for yesterday's thoughts, and I would adjust it..

D

My talk, usually would be the same talk,, but putting some of the things that I know the people are willing to learn.

A

So you listen for the buzz,, the thing that people are talking about, and you adjust?, that's right.

C

I like that, it all starts with the empathy, right?.

A

Empathy for the audience,.

C

That is going to be sitting there listening to us..

C

Then you bring that out with what would they want to learn. exactly.

A

This is incredibly important.. I have to agree with all of you that the number 1 thing that you can do if you're going to be a presenter,, whether you're presenting to eight people at work during lunch or.

A

800 at a big conference, is extreme empathy.

A

You may have been in software for five years, 10, years, or 20,, but the audience, remember, might have been in software for a month.

A

put yourself in their shoes,. Come from their perspective., your three-letter acronyms,, your tlas, expand them.

A

Context, history,, you maybe talking to someone who's a different age, or different culture, or different language. localizing. Your talks to the local buzz.

D

I, like that. one of the things that.

A

I've done that I think, is okay, since we're in the dominican republic,. Is I've been talking to everyone ahead of time,, making sure all of my jokes,, my gifs,.

A

My memes,, those memes.

A

This culture, because a gif of neil patrick harris, doesn't go over well in russia or wherever.

A

You've got to find out,, so I localize all my talks.

A

localize doesn't mean translate it to spanish,, but it means with empathy,, respect my audience, and make sure that everything is correct.

A

I think another thing that I like to do,.

B

Particularly with the audience is,, sometimes we were going through a technology that we're just so used to,.

B

So for us, it's like a second nature. "oh,. I know what this is,. I know what these commands: are." bingo. I'll, just intentionally put typos as I'm typing into.

B

The or code in an exception.

B

because as you're doing it in the real world, stuff happens.

B

It always doesn't go smoothly, as it does in the marketing videos,.

B

And in the blog post, and things of that nature., so when your audience sees that, "oh man, scott made a typo,, but he was able to come back and fix it.". That happens to me all the time..

B

I have exceptions, and I type the wrong thing.

B

Instead of docker,, I might type rocker, something weird and obscure, and then, oops, got to go back and I got to correct it., but in showing that, you have that human side to you, like I'm, not a machine., I'm not perfect..

B

I make typos., I make mistakes because we all do.

B

I think that just helps us connect with them so much more.

C

I'm known for doing that unintentionally,, but now I know that it happened.

A

It's a really good point. in fact,. You may do it unintentionally,, but you recover from it. yes.

D

Yeah. but cecil and I are very similar,.

A

And that we both consciously make mistakes.

A

I'll make sometimes what look like dramatic mistakes for the purposes of education.

A

Because if you go into a perfect hour and everything works,.

A

Do you think it's going to work for them? no.

D

It's not. not the same way., so I consciously make mistakes,.

A

Doesn't compile or doesn't work, throw an exception, and then the fun is in the debugging.

A

in fact,. I would say.

C

An important tip as a presenter is to stay calm under pressure.

C

When you do run into that, "oh, demo, fail." I've had times where I've recovered and people said, "you know that was the best part of your talk, was watching. You figure out how to recover.".

C

But I've also had times where I've said, "hey, look, I'm going to have to move on because I don't know what's going on here,, but you can follow up with me after and I'll. Let you know,".

C

Because it turned out, like the network, had proxy issue or something.

A

So let's talk about that., so first thing we heard is, empathy..

A

So if we popped up,, if we had our bullets here,, we have empathy. that's number 1..

A

Next one is intentionality, being prepared.

A

So we intentionally make mistakes to move the narrative forward.

A

Yesterday, I had a computer lockup and.

A

We can joke about why it locked up or tease the operating system,.

A

But the fact is stuff happens., so I was blessed enough to have another laptop,, but I'm also very prepared and very intentional..

A

I literally pulled the laptop out, boot. It up, had the slide in dropbox, opened it, continued.

A

I think it took about 90, seconds, and folks thought that was a useful thing..

A

I tweeted about it as a tip, and someone said, "well,. Not everyone has two laptops.".

A

That's a true statement.

B

A

How can we be intentional, prepared if we don't necessarily have unlimited resources?.

D

Well, for me,, I understand that you having the slides outside of your computer is the first step.

D

Bingo., imagine that you had two laptops probably, and you had.

D

The slides only in the one that broke, what would have happened?.

D

So that's something very important.

D

Be prepared, be ready.

D

in my case,. Sometimes I do presentations when I need to compare- and it happen to me everyday that I updated the ide moment.

D

Before and myself, said, "never do that.".

A

Never update the night before., never update the night before. you're ready, you test it,.

D

You know that it's going to run. do not do any change to that computer.

D

when I travel, especially internationally,.

A

I go to windows update and I pause updates for seven days..

A

Never take an update within a few days of doing your job.

A

That's a good tip.

D

That's part of being ready., so you save half the slides, outside,.

A

That means dropbox, onedrive, google, wherever so that worst-case scenario, nightmare scenario, you take it out of the audience and say, "hey,. Can I borrow your laptop?" somebody [inaudible] borrow a laptop.

A

What about internet? internet goes down.? What do you do when the internet goes down?? I personally test my apps and do everything in airplane, mode.

A

I practice on the airplane without airplane wi-fi because you just never know., so I always try to assume you have no internet,, which is hard for a cloud demo.

C

Right., do you practice for those eventualities?.

A

I'm not sure. now, that you mention.

C

Yeah, I had a talk once in norway and I remember.

C

That I just assumed there'd be internet connection in the room. I go in there,, there's nothing,, no wi-fi. luckily, a gentleman in the audience had a mifi,.

D

And so he saved my day because I was doing everything against.

C

Github. as a github employee at that time,.

C

I could have run an all local instance of it.. I would probably recommend that if you can run a local instance or an emulator or anything like that.,.

A

Or even a video. yeah,, a video is a good way to put a back up.

A

for big, important stuff,. I record a screencast of anything important and if it goes bad,, I can always play the video and talk to it.

C

A

So assuming there's internet,.

A

I've also had issues where I assume there'd be hdmi., I rolled into a conference,, and it was vga..

A

So now I have a dongle for everything.

B

One of the things that I try to do now is before I go to a location,. I just ask the organizers, well,, what's the environment that I'm walking into?.

D

Things like what does the screen look? Like,.

B

What type of plugs do I have?? You know what I mean?.

C

The resolution., the resolution that I need to have.

B

What kind of mics do I have?? Am I going to be able to walk around, or do I need to be stationary?, so at least then, as you're preparing to be presenting in that environment,?

B

You know what you're expecting, as you walk in there.

A

That might seem obvious after the fact,, but so few people do that. the simple thing that you're describing,, which is be prepared,, ask questions,, know what you're walking into..

A

I am personally shocked and I don't mean to put anyone on blast,.

A

But I'm shocked how many people just show up with a mac,.

A

No dongles,, no idea for what they have, and they just assume it'll work..

A

The problem is that if it works a couple of times,, then you'll assume it will work forever..

A

Is it 16 by nine or four by three?.

A

Do they want pdfs,? Do they have a clicker?.

A

Do you even have a place to put your laptop?.

A

I've had times where I had a little box like this and nowhere for my mouse and nowhere for my demo,.

C

And then suddenly you.

A

Become a problem speaker because you're like, oh, can I get another table?.

C

Or the conference might want to run the slides of their computers, and then suddenly.

A

You don't have your sticky notes, available. yeah, and then you'd, surprise them, because you say, "oh,. I assume that I'd be doing it on my own.

D

For me, the mic is very important, because it's the way I do presentations, I like to move around because I like to be, I mention before I leave [inaudible].

D

it's like being part of the people that are listening to me.

D

I've been in recent talks where I'm stationary, because I have a mic.

D

to type with one hand?

D

so be prepared., so you as the organizer, the type of mic that I'm going to be using., going to be something on the hair? with my hair, there's some mics that they don't fit. Well.

D

It's very, very true., so empathy, intentionality,.

A

And then the last one, I think is personality.

B

So I like to use humor.

A

I use the term edutainment because I was a college professor and I always found professors boring, to lighten it up..

A

How did you find your voices?? How did you find your voice and decide who you wanted to be on stage?.

B

So for me, I don't think I'm a funny person.

A

I'm just being honest.

B

In terms of me, presenting,, I like to look at the content and I'm like,.

B

"Well,, what is it that's in here? That's going to get people excited,", right?.

D

Because most of the time,, I'm speaking to.

B

Technical folks, and technology is what's exciting to them.

B

So what are the points within this journey that we're taking.

B

Together that I could really emphasize and show excitement?.

A

All right., so I don't really use jokes.

B

I use like points of excitements to be like,.

A

"Oh well,, I really want you to pay attention to this thing.".

B

Like, "servers, wow,: this is super cool," and let me show you what I built and then I get into the demo.

A

Or, "oh man, this exception, happened,.

B

And this is what it looks like," so now I'm showing different types of emotion, now,,.

A

Like I'm sad,, I'm upset. but now,.

B

How do we go forward and rectify those situations, or just to draw attention to those things that we're trying to look at?.

A

You say that you build excitement, but when I see you present,, I always feel empowered..

A

I feel I come out more powerful than I did before, because I didn't know that, and now I know it., you give me a sense of like, "well,. He just did that. I'm going to do that. Now, and I have more power to go to my job or my project and make it better.".

A

Your excitement makes me powerful.

B

Right., because I want you to look at it and be like, "I can do it. Too.".

A

At the end of the day,, that's the whole goal.

C

Exactly. yeah. I'd say to add to that, I mean,. I think you bring up an important point, which is that the content ultimately has to carry the topic, right?.

C

It has to be a topic that people are interested in and that they're going to learn something., but you can't think even good content. If you.

C

Don't at least give it a little bit of your personality.

C

Like,, I can have a dry sense of humor,, so I will use a little humor at the beginning and maybe three or four people out of 100 will laugh,. But there's got be one of them.

C

But then, after that, part, I want to really get into the story.. What I try to do is let my enthusiasm for the topic show., I remember being given this one piece of advice,.

C

If you feel like you're being a little bit effusive,.

C

Try toning it up twice as much, because the camera takes off 50 percent of that, right?.

D

Yeah. so be energetic,.

C

Go ahead and feel free to move around. you'll feel awkward at first,, but it looks more toned down than you think in your own head.

A

That's a really important thing that I've learned.. I did a lot of musical theater in high school,.

A

I did a number of musicals and plays.

A

act. It up, turn it to 11.

A

It might seem weird to have your arms out like this.

D

That's way too big.

A

No,, like you play to the back row., you want them to know. What's going on.

C

I noticed you're doing that in your talk.. You were like-.

A

It works though., it's sparkle, fingers.

D

Yeah., you mentioned that being energetic, and that's my personality.

D

So for me, I just go on stage and I just be me.

D

I just put the energy of the subject that I'm talking about., I make some jokes.. I try to, like you've mentioned,.

D

Is that localize the joke., because I joked out,. What's here in dr,.

D

Dominican republic, that we are right, now, won't work in montreal when I leave. or it won't work.

D

In seattle, or in any other place because of the context.

D

A humor in montreal,.

A

A humor in seattle,, a humor in here.

D

You try to pick that.

A

Fantastic., so we have learned about audience: empathy,.

A

We've learned about being prepared and intentionality,.

A

And we learned about personality. some resources that we want to share with you on the back screen.

A

Here is, there was a talk. We did called public speaking.

A

We had myself, kendra, maria, casey,, donovan brown.. This is up on channel 9..

A

You can go search for public speaking with any of those names and you'll find that, and then another one,. If you go to speakinghacks.com.

A

This is actually a video that I did with rob conery that has actually a free, pluralsight talk..

A

I went and talked to the folks at pluralsight.. It's totally free.. You don't need to sign up for pluralsight..

A

They will teach you how to be a better presenter.. It's called the art of speaking.. Thank you very much,, cecil philip, phil haack, andres pineda., we're here at the caribbean, developer, conference,. Why aren't you here?.